CLOUD FORMSWhen, from the water’s quiet mirror,A mist floats off like a carpetAnd the moon, wrapped in its undulations,Revels in its haunted, haunting play,Then we are pleased as children;Watching it lift up the mountain,Deepen and then spread,Bar after bar, to become the sortOf lowering sky that can go either way:Soak us or pass on, overhead.And if from there it should be raisedUp to a thinner atmosphereHow firmly based, how crisp it seems,Towering, gathering all its splendourFor a proclamation on the plenitude of power(Since what we fear may well be our fate).We tremble in the shadow of its threatening.

Say it climbs higher still;The threat now utterly removedInto a heavenly lightness,A mere something there that dissolvesEver so softly; less than a patter of fleecesMoving, deliciously combed,Upwards from below, towardsTheir Shepherd, into his lap and hand.

Yet all must be brought downBy the weight of our world.Pierced, when dense and very large,The stack must thunderouslyDischarge, as armies do that roll outIn splendid array only to disintegrate;The earth then receiving their remains.But keep the eye on where it frays,Describing what comes down while feelingThat it’s upwards we should always gaze.

After Goethe – stratus, cumulus, cirrus, nimbus

HOMAGE TO HOWARDHoly mountain, realm of seem.Goaded by a breeze, it sways,As if some flimsy palanquinWhose gathered gauzes drift apart.It glories in continuous metamorphosis,Now immobile, now a dream:Can you see it and believe your eyes?

Trust to the strength of your own projection,Choosing to define, while the indefiniteRamps a lion or unfurls an elephantOr turns a camel’s neck into a Jabberwock– Until the army of barmyImages wrecks itself on a rock.The trumpeter heralds his own dissolutionWell before a judgement can be sounded.

Yet Howard gave us an instrumentFor getting the airborne groundedBy latching on to the gone, and firming upThe ephemeral. He was the first to hold it fastBy naming drifts, compactions,Dispersals and descents,For which the planet offers thanks.